Help Your Developers Become Storytellers!

Hiring TipsEmployer Branding

With no shortage of job opportunities, developers increasingly want to know what makes a company more attractive than the competition. While HR leaders can rattle off all the benefits and perks off the top of their heads, your organization's most influential brand ambassadors and storytellers are often your own employees or your current developers. A talented software developer, has probably heard pretty much all the sales pitches the HR handbook has to offer. However, when a colleague is full of enthusiasm about their company, or the projects the team is working on, it's hard for even the most sought-after developers to ignore that enthusiasm.

While it's unlikely that your developers will become brand ambassadors overnight, here are a few tips to help you get started.

You need to know what attracts developers to an employer

Before you turn your current developers into brand ambassadors, it's important to understand what really interests developers. You can, of course, highlight what great benefits you offer should your developers, but making the company values tangible to other developers is the wrong approach. It's not surprising, then, that your developers are eager to showcase more than benefits. Some of them will surely rave about your great equipped kitchen, or the wonderful food from the company restaurant. But you're sure to find that the majority of your developers think that your engineering culture, in particular, is particularly attractive because of the freedoms you allow or the great collaboration within, or across, teams.

Invite developers as guest writers on your blog

If developers have strong opinions on certain topics, they are usually not afraid to share them. However, it can be difficult for brand evangelists to find suitable platforms to share positive opinions about their development department. The good news is that many developers we've spoken to are willing to act as storytellers if they're passionate about the company you work for.

However, it's up to you, willing employees, to create attractive frameworks for sharing content.Many companies have started encouraging your developers to share stories about why you decided to join the dev team. Although many developers maintain personal blogs and know how to write compelling stories, providing editorial support can make it easier for your developers to contribute. Opening your company blog to developers, is an easy way to establish your dev team as brand ambassadors.